1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to priority determination of data and more particularly relates to automated priority determination of call home records.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many electronic and computer devices send data to a central data repository. A wide variety of data is sent to central repositories, such as error reports, status reports, statistical reports, transactional information, sensor readings, and the like. As the number of devices that send data packages to a central location increases, the number of data packages also increases. Some data packages may be urgent, requiring immediate attention, while others may require little or no attention at all.
Currently, those wishing to access data packages within the central data repository often spend large amounts of time sifting through data packages searching for high priority data packages, or for previously identified data packages. Systems with many call home devices, or with years of call home data, make this manual searching nearly impossible. Even in situations where manual searching is possible, manual searches can miss critical information, and users may have differing opinions as to the priority or the severity of data. Manual searches through data packages waste time and allow important data to be missed.
Additionally, many call home enabled devices have only limited connections to the central data repository. These devices may only have access to dialup connections, or may gather data packages from other call home enabled devices to send at one time. With either a slow connection, or with a large amount of data to transmit, more important data packages may be delayed while less important data packages are being transmitted. Even if call home enabled devices were to prioritize their call home packages, they only have access to the call home packages that they have collected, and cannot calculate a system-wide priority. The opportunity to load system-wide priorities traditionally only presents itself when microcode is loaded onto a call home enabled device. Loading microcode is typically an infrequent and often lengthy process.